So, now we’ve been doing this a while we’ve been thinking about how to encourage people from starters to beyond! This will be part 1 of the article focusing on what to do with your starter, part 2 will cover expanding out with additional units.

I think the starter set for the USA is a terrific beginning for an army and also good value for money, giving a good starting force out of the box. As ever, The Boss has an even better deal of the army for £70 with free postage here!

So, what do you get? In short an army which covers most of the options and shows off some of the toys you can get with K47’s rift tech.

Strengths

• Good basis for expansion
• Flexible in how you build the basic infantry
• Easy army to learn the game with, with good army wide special rules
• Tesla – Thanks Nikolai!
• The 1918 Browning Automatic Rifle – mass firepower, fewer bodies needed

Weaknesses

• Limited anti tank if not thought about pre- building
• Small numbers of order dice at starter level as relativly elite

But before we get to the new shinys, lets start with the basic troopers. By getting 20 plastic US Army infantry, you have options. Included in which is the ability to get weapons teams out the box too. You don’t want to be stingy with boots on the ground as K47 is a objective based gane and you are going to need to have the ability to get them! But also bear in mind that you dont need to stick to the regimented ’10 guys in a squad’ approach. In fact it is better in some cases not too.

Also the USA plastic kit is very flexible, to the point where you can create some of the specialists and teams right out of the box that will really round out your starting force.

My recommended build is:

• Lt and a friend (always keep a command team to 2 figs unless you have a very good reason, the -1 to being hit from being a small team is invaluable!)
• Sniper team – more for threat than anything, but great at removing key models, weapon teams nco’s or commanders due to the sniper rules. Dont think of these as auto problem solvers, they are a board control element – opponents will hesitate to approach them, especially if they are on ambush.
• Bazooka team – everyones favourite from the movies. In the starter army this gives a crucial second anti tank option aside from the Sherman T.
• 2 squads of 6 + NCO. Id recommend 2 BAR’s in each and NCO with smg, as it looks cool. Remeber your army rule of fire and move, this is a HUGE advantage for a mobile force and applies to rifles and BAR’s letting you put out very high volumes of accurate fire while advancing.

All together 20 guys and a great core of a bolt action army too!

Heavy Infantry

These are the guys that got me into the USA, you get five in the starter, and can have up to 10 in a unit. They are always veteran and in a reinforced platoon you can actually do a full army of them (I’ll write about the legendary 107th ‘Snapping Turtles soon!). They also benefit from not being slow like most other armies Heavy Infantry. At this squad size they have 2 uses:

• Mass firepower – assault rifles with 2 shots a piece, these guys can put out a good rate of fire.
• Resilient – This is huge, needing 6’s to kill makes these guys great objective campers and general pains in the ass. The opponent will have to dedicate volumes of fire yo achive anything, which helps your other units out. Remeber though this is only vs shooting, not in melee – avoid close quarters unless you are certain you can win.

So for the army 4 + NCO as standard, these are the “get it done” squad.

Coyote

Now, I love the walkers like I love cake, but this is the weakest element of the army and one prime for replacment as you expand. Its useful as an mmg or hmg that can ignore small arms fire. However for the price of one of these you can get both those teams! Its not bad in smaller games, but as you expand there are much better options.

The figure however is very nice, and I’m currently building my platoon of them for tank wars (this logic is often pointed to by others to explain the #streakofshame)

Sherman T

This is going to be the key piece your starter army works around. The Sherman T is a great dual use medium tank, with the Tesla rule making the main gun effective vs infantry and vehicles. The only drawback is a relativly short range of 36″.

It is worth noting that you can build the standard turret too from the kit, giving you the more ranged anti tank option and also an ability to switch up for bolt action games.

Summary

Overall this gives you a nice solid starting 750 point army. As above a solid army list can be found here.

For the next article I’ll focus on expanding the army and extras you might want to add in.

HQ Out.